Walmart, once eager to promote diversity, pulls back amid conservative pressure

In June 2020, as protesters spilled into the streets after the murder of George Floyd, Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, promised action.

In a blog post, he said that “slavery, lynching, the concept of separate but equal … have morphed into a set of systems today that are all too often, unjust” and promised to address systemic racism by establishing a Center for Racial Equity that would give out $100 million in grants over five years. He also pledged to make changes within the company and “actively shape our culture to be more inclusive.”

Four and a half years later, Walmart is sending a different message, pulling back on some of those initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI.

As a result of the changes, the company will stop sharing data with the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit that tracks corporate LGBTQ+ policies. Third-party merchants will no longer be able to sell some LGBTQ+-themed items, such as chest binders, on Walmart.com that could be marketed to children. It will no longer use the terms DEI and Latinx in official communications. And Walmart will not renew the Center for Racial Equity, the philanthropic initiative that McMillon announced in 2020, when the agreement expires next year.

Robby Starbuck, an anti-DEI activist and a social media influencer, declared the changes a victory Monday. In a post on social media, Starbuck said that he had told executives at the company that he was working on a story about “wokeness” at Walmart, but that instead the two sides had “productive conversations” to make changes “before Christmas when shoppers have very few large retail brands they can spend money with who aren’t pushing woke policies.” A spokesperson for Walmart confirmed the changes, some of which were already in motion.

“We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers, and to be a Walmart for everyone,” the company said in a statement.

Walmart wasn’t the only company to make DEI pledges in 2020. At the time, there were questions about whether it was a movement, or a temporary moment.

“I anticipated in 2020 we might see something like this, but it’s certainly been a ferocious pushback,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at NYU School of Law.

Many companies are also concerned about the threat of litigation targeting DEI programs after a 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down race-conscious college admissions. At NYU School of Law, the Meltzer Center has been hosting a quarterly webinar for employers helping them to understand which DEI programs are legally safe and which could possibly make them targets for lawsuits.

Glasgow and his colleagues use a mnemonic called “the three P’s”: programs that show preference to legally protected groups and give them a palpable benefit – like hiring quotas or internships open only to candidates of a certain race – can make employers legally vulnerable.

Diversity experts note that while companies worry about the social and cultural backlash they’re facing, they also have to juggle concerns about their workforce. Some feel that scaling back DEI will hamper efforts to recruit and retain Black workers.

“What’s discouraging – the blowback from this – is that companies that have renounced their DEI commitments may find it hard to recruit people of color and harder to retain them once they do recruit them,” said Frank Dobbin, a DEI expert at Harvard University and author of the 2022 book “Getting to Diversity.” “I think this will have an unfortunate effect on Walmart’s current employees.”

For Black workers, said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociologist and DEI expert at Washington University in St. Louis, pulling back from diversity policies “reinforces the message that they don’t belong.”

Starbuck has waged online campaigns against a number of companies whose policies he deems too “woke.” While he is benefiting as much from a trend to reverse DEI policy as he is instigating it, companies across the United States have been preparing for the potential of possible attacks by activists. For them, the calculus involves weighing the impact on suppliers and employees against the potential financial cost of a boycott or other actions pushed by Starbuck. Walmart’s actions underline the risk it may see in a public fight, particularly as the anti-DEI agenda gets a boost after Donald Trump’s election.

Until now, it was clear what sort of companies were changing their DEI approaches. “What we’re not seeing are organizations that recruit mostly from liberal elite colleges pulling back from DEI,” Glasgow said.

Starbuck initially focused on companies with customers he thought would most likely be sympathetic to his cause, like Tractor Supply and John Deere. Walmart represents a different kind of company: one with employees and customers on both sides of the political divide, what Starbuck has referred to as a “50-50” customer base.

“This is Walmart preparing for a Trump presidency and Justice Department,” said Amber Madison, co-founder of Peoplism, a DEI consultancy. “If Walmart’s assessment of the Trump administration is that it will protect his friends and go after its enemies, this is Walmart showing they’re a friend.”

Starbuck would likely agree. “America just voted, and we voted against ‘wokeness,’” Starbuck said in a video posted on the social platform X, as he announced his next targets: Amazon and Target.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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